and then i caught myself
by fliortia
Summary: She's lost hers. He's searching for his. The sequence of events are generally unfortunate when one is unsure of ones own identity.


She's lost hers.

It slipped from her grasp the moment she looked at that photograph. The black and white and grey ink spaced in such away across that paper that it stole her breath, along with something else. Something which didn't return to her so easily, something which didn't return. So as that man which made her blind with rage said, point blank no less, that looks were not the only thing her and that cursed bitch shared, a little more of that something, disappears.

She's still not sure what that something is.

She sees him in the Grill exactly a week later, she's with Stefan and he doesn't see her or he pretends not to, she can never tell with him. He's sitting, alone of course, at the bar, compelling the bartender not to charge him for any of the glasses of various liquours he orders. He looks so lost but she wonders why she feels so alone.

Their friendship has become nothing in a world where she has increasingly little to lose. She feels isolated from everything and everyone and quite simply cannot bring herself to admit that he was the catalyst for this sudden dip in strength, the straw that finally broke the Camel's back. Having entered the world of the supernatural as she did, with her whole heart and soul, she knows regretting the situation she is in now will acomplish nothing, be be utterly pointless but her subconscious is less rational and destructive thoughts begin to nag away at the back of her mind.

'It's nothing,' she tells Stefan when he asks. 'Nothing at all.'

* * *

But Katherine is waiting in the wings and notices the strain in the relationship, the weak link in the seemingly impenetrable chain, and so she makes a move. Katherine twists his mind with sweet words and evil whispers. Then, finally, she taps the domino at the beginning of the line and watches. Watches. Watches.

As it all. Falls. Down.

The chain reaction is beautiful, Katherine watches as the mirror image of her face crumples and becomes weak. It's amusing to say the least. Stefan stays away for a few days. He's an addict though and severing all ties with her human doppleganger was the first step towards Katherine and she knows it so she waits, patiently. Although she would never admit it to anyone he means more to her than he should, he is her weakness and that means she will always be vulnerable to some extent. Katherine Pierce has a weak link. A weak link which she knows somebody is just waiting to exploit because that is how the world works.

The doppleganger is merely a pawn in a game beyond the reach of her imagination. She sits and waits in her room for days on end expecting him to return and tell her that the words weren't true, that he didn't mean it.

He doesn't.

It's been a month since Damon lost her trust and she lost their friendship. She marks the anniversary of the event she doesn't want to care about by bringing her duvet to the sofa and eating an entire tub of cookie dough ice cream whilst it watching romance films which don't turn out the way anybody wants them to. (500) Days of Summer gets played four times that day, with excessive tears everytime she watches Tom turn up to the party and have his expectations blown to pieces by reality.

She's lost so much in the past month she knows her expectations will never match up to reality, she just wishes it could work out for some people the way they want it to.

A part of her soul has gone and she doesn't know how to get it back. But the worst part is, there's nobody to ask; everyone has left. Jenna continues to potter through her small town life, Alaric rapidly adapting and trying to throw the past few years of his life into a dark corner of his mind now he has moved on from Isobel. She wishes she could do the same just as easily. Caroline has fled, bailing before life with her vampire-hating Mother becomes even more complicated and Bonnie remains aloof, claiming to always be there for her but never really wanting to know about the problems she has on her mind.

And so she is alone, trapped in a world where she doesn't even know herself even more. She thinks back to her earlier teenage years - the braces, the school dances which meant everything and the end-of-the-world boy drama - when she reinvented herself each week, how easy it was to create a new identity for oneself back then at a time where wearing black eyeliner instead of grey was an absurdly large decision. She's lost her identity and it isn't easy anymore, to reinvent, because at least back then she had something to want to do it for. Now? Now she has nothing, noone.

The realisation comes to her as she is watching the credits of Moulin Rouge fade to black and she swipes away the stray tears which have fallen. She has lost too much to hold onto old grudges. It makes no sense to harbour hatred for somebody who is one of the few she can say still cares for her or, at least she hopes he does.

'Hello.' Damon's voice is neither surprised nor angry, joyous is the only word she can put to it. He steps to one side, eyes twinkling.

Elena walks through the door, the sense of completion is sudden and overwhelming - it seems like the last month had never happened and, just for one blissful moment, the memory of that photograph is wiped from her memory.

'I've missed you.' She admits, bashfully.

'You are, after all, only human.' And then he grins and she knows everything is right in the world.

* * *

I wanted to write something about the two of them. Something about forgiveness but also about the dark place that Elena is clearly in at the moment because of Katherine's return and everything that she consequently questions about herself. I only referred to Elena as 'she' throughout almost the entire piece because when she's with Damon she doesn't need to tell him not to talk about some things, she just seems to forget and he doesn't mention them (RE: Bloodlines). But, unknowingly, when she's with him she seems to find a piece of herself and create an identity of her own, completely seperate from Katherine. I hope you enjoyed :)


End file.
